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Almost one in four IT directors and CIOs claim that managing environmental constraints is of little or no importance to them. A survey of 100 IT directors and CIOs, commissioned by Computacenter Services and carried out by PMP Research, found that:

• Lack of available space for new infrastructure was the greatest concern (43%). This was followed by lack of available power capacity (33%) and the high cost of real estate (20%).
• l Nearly half (48%) of public sector IT directors have reduced processing power on the desktop or are evaluating a move towards centralised application delivery.  Yet more than six out of 10 IT directors in the banking sector have no intention of taking this route.
• Almost a third (32%) of manufacturing professionals state that managing environmental constraints is of little or no importance. This compares to 16% in retail, 29% in banking and finance and 16% from the public sector.
• One in seven (14%) admits to there being little awareness within their organisation of the need for environmentally friendly IT practices.

Terry Walby, Computacenter’s datacentre solutions director, Computacenter Services comments: “Organisations need to take heed of the green agenda. Improved environmental controls to reduce the demand on cooling systems and technology innovation – such as consolidation and virtualisation, or using management tools to shut down servers during idle periods – can reduce power demand by up to 80%.”

Electricity now accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the operating expenses in many datacentres. Yet, on average, only half the power consumed is actually required to operate IT systems. The rest is consumed by lighting, cooling, losses in power distribution and even air movement. Walby concludes: “Benchmarking and improving the efficiency of a datacentre environment will not only enable organisations to optimise their datacentres but also make best use of energy resources, save thousands of pounds on monthly power bills and reduce their carbon footprint.”